


Death is only the Beginning

by Luzifer



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types
Genre: Court of Owls, Talon!Jason
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-09
Updated: 2015-09-17
Packaged: 2018-04-19 23:24:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 21,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4764875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Luzifer/pseuds/Luzifer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It has been several years since the Death of Jason Todd. Richard 'Dick' Grayson continued his job as Nightwing in Blüdhaven, Tim Drake took the mantle of Robin—and later, Red Robin—after Damian showed up, and Bruce is still stopping criminals in Gotham as Batman. Though, when Dick runs into a Talon in Blüdhaven, things come up that neither of them would have believed possible.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Beginnings

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So after I read for some time stories about Batman, I got this Idea of Jason being resurrected and found by the Court of Owls to be trained as a Talon. Because I never found a story about him being featured as anything else but the Red Hood or Robin, I thought it would be a nice change for once.
> 
> As for the age of our Robins:  
> Dick: 23  
> Jason: pre-death 15, now 20, though close to 21  
> Tim: 17  
> Damian: 11

* * *

I. Beginnings

Beta-read by **[RascalJoy](https://www.fanfiction.net/u/5083753/)**  on Fanfiction.net ****

* * *

Winter decided to roll in early this year in Blüdhaven. The snow is falling steadily and the wind adds its extra frigid touch. The frozen trees haven't quite lost all of their leaves yet, October not even over and already a 2-inch sheet of snow covered the city. The cars on the streets below are honking. A few angry remarks can be heard from the impatient drivers, shouting at the others at the front to get a move on.

One might know Blüdhaven as one of the most dangerous cities around, but recently, the crime rate has gone down. While few might not know who exactly the vigilante responsible is, they do know that there is one protecting them during the night.

A shadow flies through the darkness, grappling rapidly from building to building and leaping gracefully from roof to roof.

Said vigilante stops at the edge of one such rooftop, looking down into the snow covered alley below him where a group of thugs had cornered a young woman in the corner. From the shadow comes a silent 'tze' as he silently jumps down the building.

In the alley, the men are moving closer towards the woman.

"Why don't you come with us for the evening, honey?" says the thug nearest to the woman, leaning menacingly against the brick wall she's pressed against.

"Yes, we could have such a fun time. Maybe some drinks or a sweet little talk in a bar," another says with a grin. His eyes glint with lust as they rove over the woman.

"No, please leave me alone!" she pleads, scooting away from the two men only to bump into the third one, who grasps her hips behind her. She jerks away and glares angrily at the men, though there is a hint of fear there, too. "Don't touch me!" she snaps.

"Seems like we got a fierce one here, guys!" leers the thug at the wall. As he reaches out to touch the woman's hair, a silhouette detaches itself from the shadows.

"I think the lady said not to touch her, didn't she?"

The thugs whirl around, one of them putting his hand into the pocket of his faded jeans and brandishing a pocketknife menacingly at the newcomer.

The woman eyes the knife fearfully, glancing at the shadow from the corner of her eye.

The shadow turns out to be a man in a kind of dark costume with a blue bird symbol on the front. Stripes extended from the bird's spread wings across the broad shoulders and down his well-muscled arms to his fingertips.

"You should respect a lady's wishes, don't you think?" he says cockily, shooting a grin at the young woman. He gives her a two-fingered salute. "Nightwing, at your service!" introduces the man – Nightwing, apparently.

Behind the woman, the thug growls at the intruder. "And who are you supposed to be, jerk?" he asks angrily, stepping forward.

Nightwing looks surprised, perhaps even a bit hurt. "You don't know me? Seriously? Now I'm upset..." He sighs, seeming a bit annoyed. "After all this time I thought they would recognize me..." he murmurs almost to himself.

The thug with the knife stares at Nightwing disbelievingly. "Are you __pouting_ _?" he snaps, anger underlining his words. "Are you making fun of us?!"

"I wouldn't dream of it," the man assures him, though he sounded a bit amused. "But…maybe I am?" he adds with a cheeky grin.

The first thug growls. "That's it, guys. Get him!"

In the next moment, the other two are circling closer to Nightwing, who just shakes his head and lets the grin drop a bit.

"And here I thought we could sort this out without hurting you guys," he sighs, almost apologetic. Nightwing puts his hands to his back, pulling two escrima sticks from the loops sewn there.

The two thugs are closing in, apparently unconcerned about the weapons the other is now holding. Thug A without the knife sinks into fighting stance, fists up and spread wide over his chest. Although he tries to look intimidating, his sloppy positioning makes it obvious that he has little to no experience in a fight.

Nightwing smiles a bit. That one will be easy.

So when thug A throws a fist at him, Nightwing dodges with ease, bringing one of his eskrima sticks down hard behind the thug's kneecap. The man crumples as his leg gives way, but before Nightwing can do anything else, thug B rounds on him from behind, knife raised and ready to strike.

The woman cries out to warn him, but is seized from behind by the last thug.

"Take care of him, guys, I'll meet you in the usual place," he orders, already dragging the woman down the alleyway.

She pulls against his arms, struck dumb with terror as she struggles to get away, but she's no match to the physical strength of her captor.

Nightwing ducks sideways to evade the swing of the knife, mentally thanking the woman for her quick warning. He notices that thug A has regained his footing and is limping forward to aid his companion. However, his attention is immediately recaptured by thug B as the now smirking man attacks again.

The knife flashes in the dimly lit alley, aiming toward Nightwing's chest. The vigilante blocks it with his first escrima stick and hits the hand of the thug with his second in quick succession. The man releases the knife with a hiss, shaking the afflicted appendage as thug A steps in to take a swing at Nightwing's head with both fists. Sidestepping the attack, Nightwing kicks the feet out from under the him, sending thug A to the ground with a ' _thud!_ '.

"Son of a b-!" thug A starts to exclaim, but is cut short as Nightwing renders him unconscious with a well-placed strike to the temple.

While Nightwing is distracted, thug B snatches the knife from the ground and lunges forward in an attempt to slash his opponent across the arm. Just before the knife connects, the blade is blocked yet again by an escrima stick. A few sparks fly as the weapons clash, then Nightwing lashes out with his other weapon into the man's unprotected stomach.

The thug doubles over and Nightwing's follow up swing slams into the back of the thug's head, sending the man – unconscious – to the ground beside his similarly fallen friend.

Taking two zip-ties from his utility-belt, Nightwing quickly secures the hands of the two thugs behind their backs, sending a quick signal to the police station in charge of this district of Blüdhaven. Not that they would actually show up, but he had to try.

Once satisfied with the ties, he marches down the alley to follow the footprints of the last man and his female captive.

It doesn't take much effort for Nightwing to track him seeing as the thug left deep prints and drags in the snow, probably left by the struggling woman. He rounds a corner and spots the last man shoving the woman down another little backstreet. Running a bit faster, Nightwing looms behind the pair, his weapons at the ready as the man glances over his shoulder.

The last thug is much easier to deal with than the other two, mostly because he doesn't even try to fight back. The man throws the woman at Nightwing, who is forced to stop to catch her before she slips and falls. Taking advantage of the vigilante's distraction, the man makes a mad dash down the alleyway.

"You're alright?" Nightwing asks quickly, steadying the frightened woman. "He didn't hurt you, did he?"

The woman shakes her head, clearly relieved at her rescue. "No, I'm fine, thanks to you," she breathes. "I'm very grateful for your help."

"That's great," Nightwing smiles, glancing at the alley in which the last thug had disappeared through. "You should go home now," he suggests to the unknown woman. "Go straight there, no detours. It's not safe."

The woman nods eagerly, already turning away. "Yes, you're right," she replies, waving her hand at him. "Thanks again. I owe you my life!" Then she runs off without another glance.

Nightwing watches her for a moment, then turns and sprints along the frenzied footprints of the escaping criminal down the lane.

One of the wonderful things about winter is that following people is easy, so long as they're on the ground. The footprints mark the path of every person, civilian and criminal alike, the only reprieve being if the snow were to fall hard and fast, which – fortunately – is not the case today. However, on the flipside, Blüdhaven winters are really cold.

When he gets home, forget the mission report; first stop'll be a hot shower.

As he follows the man's path, something new appears and his eyes narrow. There are two sets of tracks now, though he was certain nobody had entered the alley.

Now on high alert, he continues following the tracks around a corner and promptly freezes on the spot. There, sprawled in a puddle of his own blood, lies the thug, the snow melting into bright red crystals around him from the warmth of the fluid leaking from the knife hilt sticking from his back.

Nightwing quickly doubles back behind a nearby dumpster, eyes flickering to take in the alley, the rooftops, and the open street for any sign that the killer is still there, waiting to strike. But he sees nothing. The city block seems empty outside from Nightwing and the bleeding out thug a few feet away. Finally, deciding the coast was clear, Nightwing creeps forward cautiously to examine the man.

Fear is still etched in the man's features, mouth gaping in an 'O' of surprise as wide, glassy eyes stare at the opposite empty rooftop.

Nightwing crouches next to him, routinely feeling for a pulse, though unsurprised to find none – not with the dagger embedded in the man's ribcage.

The disconcerting thing is Nightwing hadn't even heard a fight, let alone a dying scream from the man in front of him. Apparently, the thug hadn't noticed something was wrong until it was too late. Either that, or someone had held his mouth shut, which was unlikely judging from the man's dangling jaw.

Looking around, he notices no other tracks leaving the alley, so whoever attacked hadn't left through the other end. And there is no fire escape that could take someone up to the roof. He had a murderer on his hands that could apparently disappear into thin air. _Great._

Quickly, he inspects the man, but besides the weapon in his back, there are no further signs of injury or clue to the murderer's identity.

Undeterred, he turns his attention to the murder weapon. The handle is wrapped in thin strips of shining black leather, the guard appearing to be some sort of golden claw with a single talon on one side and two on the other. The blade itself shines silver, almost white with little engraved lines along the blade. At the butt of the handle is a little symbol, which reminds him strangely of a bird. Perhaps an eagle or an owl?

Nightwing opens a line in his comm.

"Hey Red, do you copy?" he questions.

After a few seconds, a familiar voice answers: " __Loud and clear, Nightwing. What's up?_ _ "

"I chased one of the usual street thugs down an alley and now he's lying in his own pool of bloody snow," Dick reports, glancing at the pale corpse. "There's a dagger in his back, nothing special about that, except there's a symbol on the handle. Could you have the comp run a search on it?"

" __Give me a second_ _ _,_ " Tim instructs.

Suddenly, his lenses flare blue as Tim gains wireless access to his mask.

" __Can you move closer to the symbol?_ _ "

Dick leans closer to the end of the dagger, wrinkling his nose at the smell already rising from the body.

" __Thanks_ _ _,_ " Tim calls after a few moments. " __I'll let the bat-computer run a scan. If I find anything interesting, I'll contact you._ _ "

Dick nods, though he knows that Tim can't see him. "Thanks, baby bird," he says, ending the line. The blue tinge in his vision disappeared as the connection broke.

Switching his attention back to the weapon, he takes in the drying blood on the unfortunate man's skin. A thin layer of snow already lay scattered across the cold flesh.

Taking the hilt in his hand, Nightwing begins to pull, only to find that it's solidly stuck in the man's back.

 __Huh… Probably went through a few bones,_ _ he muses _._

Tugging increasingly harder, the dagger finally breaks free, and Nightwing discovers the true reason it hadn't come loose without a fight: the blade is not in fact straight, but curved with a little barb at one side near the middle.

Shooting one last glance at the corpse of the man, Dick sighs sadly and sends another automated message to the local authorities. Let them deal with the corpse.

Grappling to the top of the next building, he takes off into the night, dagger secured safely in his belt.

 __Tim should probably take a closer look at it for fingerprints or anything else that could be useful_ _ _,_ he decides as he swings over the gaps between buildings. __But first priority is a hot shower…_ _

Out of the corner of the eye, he thought he saw someone watching him from the roof of a nearby warehouse. He grinds to a halt and jerks around, eyes probing the shadows where he thought the figure had been. Nothing is there.

Narrowing his eyes, he cautiously continues his patrol, keeping a wary eye out over his shoulder the whole way back to his apartment.

* * *

"Found anything useful yet?"

Dick leans over the back of the chair in which Tim is typing furiously on the bat-computer's keyboard. It has been a few days since Dick had chased the now dead thug into an alley, but nothing else had occurred that would give them a clue about where and – more importantly – who the killer might have been. The handle and blade of the knife held no fingerprints, so the murderer must have been smart enough to wear gloves. The toxology reports proved the blood that they found on the dagger has only been from the deceased man.

"No, nothing yet," Tim sighs, pausing briefly in his typing.

On the left side of the main monitor are flashing pictures of daggers with various symbols on the hilts, comparing them to the few snapshots of the dagger they had found on the right. The knife itself rests in a glass case on the table beside them. So far, there has yet to be a match that was even remotely close to the original.

Dick doubts that the murderer had purchased the dagger legally considering the intricacy of its design.

Perhaps the murderer had stolen it from somewhere? Would be a good reason to dump the kill weapon, for sure.

"It's almost as if this weapon just popped out of nowhere," Tim notes, breaking Dick from his train of thought. "There's no one who declares anything like it as stolen or missing and there is simply nothing recorded regarding where, when or who crafted it."

Tim falls back in his chair, folding his arms in front of his chest and giving an annoyed huff. "This is ridiculous. It's like searching for the needle in a haystack, only someone took the needle out beforehand without anyone knowing about it."

"You did what you could," Dick reassures, patting Tim on the shoulder. "Thanks, Timmy."

He turns away from the dizzying array of monitors, heading back through the cave and ascending the stairs into the manor. Just before he opens the clock, he pauses and calls back: "Are Bruce and Damian back yet?"

"Bruce is at a meeting at Wayne Enterprises right now and probably won't be back till around dinner," Tim replies, pushing the chair away as he stands up and stretches. He moves to follow his older brother upstairs. "Damian should be in his room. Bruce told him to finish a school project that's due tomorrow. You should have seen him hissing after Bruce told him that he's suspended from patrol for a week if he doesn't finish it in time," Tim adds with a smile. "He sounded like an angry cat, or something."

Dick laughs at the thought, and together they leave the cave, the bats hanging on the ceiling sleeping silently as the humming computer continues comparing symbols and daggers.

* * *

It's bright.

The plain, white room is illuminated in intense LED lights, making the room even more painful to the eye. Inside, the only furniture is a small cot with a table before it, a door built in the wall next to the two leading outside. On top of the thin mattress sits a young man in his early 20s, his black hair hanging over his eyes. A single silver streak runs through the strands at his forehead, standing out in stark contrast in the white lighting. He wears a dark red shirt that hugs every divet in his muscular frame and simple black trousers, his feet bare where they rest on the sheets.

Jason dislikes this room. No, scratch that. He __despises_ _ it. His eyes hurt, the light burning against his retinas without mercy even as his stomach grumbled in hunger on top of it all.

Leaving the room is not an option, even though he knows the door is unlocked. He could exit the room if he wanted, but he knows that disobedience is frowned upon and when his Masters finds out he will punish Jason further; probably add a few extra days to his isolation period.

Total isolation is the mildest of punishments that he can receive, though it doesn't make it anymore pleasant. How does he know leaving the room is futile? The first few times he escaped he was found almost immediately by the guards that were stationed outside. The end results were not pretty.

Opening his eyes, he sees only blurry images and colorful spots. After attempting to adjust to the light without success, he closes them again and lounges further back against the wall.

One hour, 30 minutes and 37 seconds until his next meal.

Fourteen hours, 30 minutes and 29 seconds left before his Master appears to lecture him about his mistake.

Thirty-one hours, 30 minutes and 16 seconds to go before he's released from this blasted room.

Mentally, he sighs.

How did he get inside this punishment room? Killing people _is_ his job, after all. However, killing his prey before the victim could be interrogated didn't play in his favor, let alone leaving his dagger to be found by that dratted vigilante. Jason had been lucky that the thug he'd slain had not been important to his master's cause, otherwise he would be somewhere much worse than this room. It isn't like he enjoys it in here, but it's far better than getting himself killed in some kind of deathmatch with others like him. Not that there are others truly like him, as they are dead to begin with and it doesn't even hurt them anymore.

Jason's pain tolerance is high above that of an average human, though it certainly doesn't mean he feels nothing. While a punch is muffled against his scarred skin, a stab of a knife or a shot by a gun still hurts a whole lot. Their Master made sure of his high tolerance to pain when he arrived here and underwent their inhuman training.

More than once Jason found himself on the brink of death, only to be fixed immediately afterwards with only a few new scars left to show for it. He's not afraid of death, oh hell no. Death is not as scary as some might think. He has been there, done that, and come back afterwards to spit right in its ugly face.

Jason remembers his life before his death almost perfectly, only a few gaps not counting what happened directly after his resurrection. He remembers Bruce and Alfred, the Manor, Batman… hell, he even remembers the golden boy, Dick Grayson.

He grits his teeth, his hands clenching in fists at his sides.

Right… The golden boy, the one reason Jason got stuck in this hell hole in the first place. Anger bubbles within him as he recalls the stupid man's smile and laughing blue eyes.

Soon after his indoctrination into the Court of Owls, his so called Master explained to him that Dick should have been Talon in Jason's place. Jason could distinctly recall the slightest hint of malice and regret in his master's voice as he said those words, almost as if he wished Dick was standing there in Jason's place.

Of course Jason knows that Dick had been a circus acrobat, but what the golden boy doesn't know is that the circus he had been raised in had been training Dick to become the Talon Jason himself is now. Hell, even Dick's grandfather before him had been a Talon and that asshole is still in this hideout somewhere, sleeping like a stone in one of those tanks in the chambers awaiting to be woken up by the Court.

Jason shudders at the memory of the day he had first woken up in one of those tanks, various tubes attached to his body like some kind of test-subject. It had not been pleasant to wake up in such a nightmare, only to find out it was now his reality. His time in those tanks made him pale, the influence of whatever they gave him turning his once blue eyes into a sharp gold, like the eyes of a bird of prey—like an owl. He loathes his own eyes now. They remind him of the Court, of his eternal bondage to the whim of these monsters. He had cried the first time he saw himself in a mirror after that, smashing the wretched glass to pieces under his fist before he had fallen to his knees, sobbing on the unforgiving ground.

For five, almost six years now he had been under the Court's influence, shaped like clay into something they deemed fit to use for their twisted machinations.

Inside, rage threatens to overwhelm him, but he forces himself to take deep, calming breaths.

They trained Jason for around four and a half years before they even thought about letting him leave the 'nest', as they called it. He doesn't remember the first few months he had stayed in this place. Sometimes though, he sees bits and pieces of what happened in his dreams, but most of the time he forgets them like water flowing through the gaps of his fingers. Only from when he woke up in those tanks does he remember everything in detail, particularly the pain.

Again, Jason shudders. He had tried to escape his captors in his blind rage and confusion upon waking, but had been quickly taken down by the black clad persons guarding this facility. And Jason didn't fall down easily.

His Master calls him Talon; one of many, at least. During his stay he had met many of the dark clothed individuals, though all but a few of them were not responding to anything he did, ignoring everything and everyone except for their master. Heck, they didn't even breath!

Finally, he had asked his so called Master about them with a sneer. The man had given Jason a disapproving glare and backhanded him for his insolence, but replied nonetheless and said that they were dead as if it were something completely normal. Jason chose his words carefully around him after that incident. The few others that were technically still alive talked to Jason sometimes, but not more than a couple sentences every few weeks, and afterwards they seemed to just disappear. Probably turned into one of those undead ones.

Most of the other people around were members of the Court with owl masks like his Master, though those didn't even spare him a glance, like he wasn't good enough for such people. Jason didn't let their aloof, above-it-all attitudes bother him. He never had among the aristocrats common at Bruce's parties back in the day. In fact, he wouldn't be surprised if some of those stuck up rich people were hiding behind those moon-shaped masks right now.

The sound of the doors opening alerts him to someone entering the room, and he lazily opens one eye. The outline of a black clad person is visible through the curtain of his hair, the golden lines on the suit implying that it's one of the Talons. The stiff posture and the abrupt way it walks marks it as one of the dead ones.

The sound of rattling silverware fills the room. Ah, so apparently around an hour and a half has passed by while Jason had been thinking. He wasn't surprised by his own zoning out anymore; life was pretty boring at the Court of Owls complex.

The other Talon places the meal on the table at the foot of his bed and leaves without a word. Not even they want to linger here in this brightness.

Jason sighs, but gets up nonetheless. He won't be of use to anyone if he doesn't take the tasteless meal.

Besides, his Master won't be pleased if he skips it.

The hours fly past despite Jason's hatred of the room and all around boredom. In fact, he doesn't move again until his Master enters the room and Jason is forced to get up from the bed and kneel before him. Jason loathes this gesture, but he knows from experience he will be punished if he doesn't comply.

“You made mistakes, Talon,” his master says calmly, hands clasped behind his back as he looks down at Jason. “Why is that?”

Jason does not trust the other one, _especially_ when he is speaking calmly towards him. Most of the time it does not bode well for him in the end.

“It has been a stupid mistake on my side,” Jason answers, his head bowed towards the ground. “I assure you, master, it won't happen again. Please forgive me for my inadvertence.” He can almost feel the stare that his master directs at him.

The other man clicks his tongue and turns around, away from Jason and towards the door. Before his master leaves though, he stops while holding the door open for himself. His master turns around towards Jason, only the side of his face visible.

“We do tolerate a few mistakes, Talon,” he says and his voice sounds cold with malice. “But do not let it become a habit. You know what happens to the ones that fail.” With that, he leaves.

Jason feels as if a weight has been lifted from his shoulders and lets out a deep breath, though a shudder runs through his body as he remembers his master's last words. Yes, he does know what it means. If a living Talon makes too many mistakes, he will be turned.

The only reason he he is still technically alive, is that his pros outweight the cons. His ability to think strategical during fights and the fact that he has been trained by the Court and Batman himself makes him to a great tool for his master. Jason sighs and gets up from the cold floor and returns to his place on the cot.

When the door opens the next time, it's to two other Talons sent to retrieve him.

Jason often wonders how they can even move what with being dead and all, but on the other hand, it might not be wise to ask that. He likes to be alive and would like to keep it that way, thank you very much.

The Talons are walking beside him, one on each side as they lead him to his real quarters. Not that that room actually belongs to him, seeing as it only served as a place of rest between missions and contained nothing personal.

The only furniture within is a simple but well-made bed with a nightstand, a big chest at the foot of the mattress and one big wardrobe with a table and chair right beside it. As he changes into his Talon uniform, the other two Talons leave to go to wherever it is they go when they're not marching Jason about.

Finally, fitted into his uniform, he straps on his thick belt, the two pouches on the sides filled with little throwing knifes. Another crossbelt hangs over one shoulder, adorned with a few small daggers and his clawed gauntlets. At the back of the belt are two straps, in which he holsters two guns. Not that he uses them very often, but sometimes they come in handy.

The suit itself is black with the usual golden lines, two of which run from the back of his upper arm to the inner part of his elbow. Another two slither down from the shoulders to his lower back where they meet at his spine and continue down his legs. On his upper thighs are two more wrapping down the inside of his legs, another extending from beneath his belt all the way down to his ankle.

In the center of his chest is the golden symbol of the Court: a bird with wings extended. One stripe runs down the entire length of his torso and through the middle of the symbol, two others springing from the end of each wing and following the first down his upper body before curving around to his back at hip level, ending right above his belt.

Retrieving two pairs of daggers from the bedside table, he slides them into the straps beside the pouches of his waist belt.

Looking himself over, satisfied, he exits the room.

Surely, Master will have some kind of mission for him. Jason scowls at that. There is almost no time between missions for the Court outside of his occasional (many) punishments. After all, he is the most dangerous of the Talons.

 

 


	2. Meetings

* * *

**II. Meetings**

Beta-read by  [RascalJoy](https://www.fanfiction.net/u/5083753/)

* * *

 

"Please explain again why exactly you thought it would be a brilliant idea to jump in between two groups of drug dealers armed with guns and knives and on who knows what?"

Damian hisses at a particularly painful jab of the needle as Dick sews the wound on his back shut. Clearly, this had not been one of his better ideas of the week.

According to Drake, a group of drug dealers were smuggling goods and weapons into Gotham at the harbour and Batman and Robin had been keeping an eye on them from the crane above as they unloaded their cargo. Of course Robin had elected to jump in after around five minutes of waiting despite Batman's hissed orders. As soon as Robin touched the ground in front of the group, another pocket of guards emerged from behind the containers. And they had guns. Tim hadn't mentioned guns, perhaps because he didn't deem it necessary or because he simply didn't know about them –  or rather Damian hadn't been paying as much attention as he should have to the imbecile's report – but the fact was so obvious Damian nearly blushed that he hadn't thought of it beforehand.  Rookie mistake; not that he'd ever admit it out loud, of course.  In the process of dodging a knife, a stray bullet had clipped his shoulder, resulting in the current scratch on his back. Not fatal, but annoying nonetheless. Mostly because Batman had given the speech afterwards and he had nearly been grounded for his disobedience and "recklessness."

"It's just one little cut, Grayson, I won't keel over from such a petty wound," Damian scoffs as he carefully pulls his shirt back on. He, as well as Bruce, had already changed into civilian clothes upon entering the cave. "Besides, Drake said nothing about guns anyway."

"You can't expect Tim to know everything," Dick reprimands as he moves to put away his supplies. "Look, little D… I don't want to lecture you or anything, but…just be a bit more careful next time, all right? Bruce is your father, so worrying about you is kind of in the job description. After what happened to—" Dick stops mid sentence, wincing at his own slip even as Damian arches a single eyebrow.

"What happened to whom?" Robin asks carefully.

Silence fills the cave, the only noise being the fluttering of wings from the bats on the ceiling until Dick lets out something almost like a pained sigh.

"That's…something that Bruce should tell you, not me," he says after a moment.

"And why is that?" persists Damian, folding his arms in front of his chest and leaning forward on the medical cot he was perched on. "You know you can't hide information from me, Grayson. I will find out eventually, one way or another."

Dick abruptly turns away, striding out of the medbay toward the computer with Damian trotting curiously at his heels.  Anticlimactically, the elder sank down in the computer chair, pinching the bridge of his nose as if to ward of a headache. "And why exactly should I tell you about it?"

"Because I will continue to question you until you give in," Damian reports pompously, watching Dick expectantly.  Damian always gets his way—one way or another.

Seconds turn to minutes, and Damian imagines Dick weighing the consequences in his mind behind the scrunched eyebrows and pursed lips. After a while, Dick shakes his head as if to clear his thoughts, and begins to speak.

"His name was Jason," he starts, the slightest hint of sorrow lacing his tone. "He was the second Robin after me."

Damian nods minutely in recognition.  He'd heard about the second Robin of course, but only scattered bits and pieces that amounted to practically nothing.

"Bruce caught him," Dick continued, almost nostalgic, "stealing the tyres of the batmobile without triggering the alarm. An impressive feat  for anybody, especially an untrained street boy if you ask me, and apparently Bruce thought so as well. He took him in like me, and later, Tim."

Smiling softly, Dick glances at Damian, who – again – arches an eyebrow. "You know, he was a lot like you. If he were still here, you guys would have gotten along great. He got into trouble more often than should be possible, but at the same time he got out of those situations without hardly a scratch. Bruce wasn't impressed, though."

Hearing Dick talk about the boy, Damian cou l d hear the affection and sadness in the elder's tone. Apparently, Grayson had liked this Jason pretty well.  Damian wonders if the feeling had been mutual.

"Their relationship became...strained, near the end," Dick admits softly. "Jason was becoming too violent, driven by his own rage. He became hateful and disobedient, two things Bruce won't tolerate in the field.

"Although the pinnacle of it all was when he found out his mother was alive." At this, Dick's face twists into something between fondness and anger, which made no sense. "See, his mom died of an overdose when Jason was still young," the first Robin explains. "However, it took years later before he discovered that the woman who'd been caring for him his whole life wasn't his real mother. Catherine Todd had only been a fill-in." Dick sighs regretfully. "But she loved Jason, and Jason loved her. If only that had been enough..." He trails off, seemingly caught up in the past.

Before Damian could prompt him to get on with it, Dick starts out of his stupor.  "Anyway, he sped off to search for his real mother, tracking her all the way down to Ethiopia. Her name was Dr. Sheila Heywood and she had been working in a famine relief camp just outside of Magdala." A pained expression crosses Dick's face, but he forged on. "She betrayed him. Turned him over to the Joker  without a second thought to cover up something she was doing. Maybe that's why Joker was in Ethiopia in the first place, working with her, but we think this whole thing was his setup." Dick takes a deep breath, visibly preparing himself for what he was going to say next.

"Joker beat Jason within an inch of his life and trapped him inside an abandoned warehouse, where both he and his mother – in last minute regret for her only child or because the Joker trapped her there, we're not sure –  died in the explosion. Bruce found him just minutes too late and...and he hasn't ever really been the same since."  His gaze wanders involuntarily to the bright costume encased in the center of the batcave.

Damian says nothing for a moment, for which Dick is grateful. He just looks at the former mentor,  expression inscrutable  though his mind is racing.

So that's what had happened to the second Robin.  Why had nobody told him this before? How could Jason's own blood mother betray him to someone like the Joker? Question after question spins through his head, but no answers would present themselves...

When he opens his mouth to ask Grayson about it, something completely unexpected comes out : "Does Tim know?"

"Yes, he does know," Dick affirms. "Actually, he deduced our identities by age nine."  An affectionate, if exasperated smile pokes at Dick's mouth. "The kid used to stalk us – that is, Batman and Robin – on his free nights. One time, I slipped up and performed my signature quadruple flip from Haly's circus. Tim immediately identified it, and it wasn't hard to make the connection from there. Naturally, he noticed when the pixie boots were passed on to a different person and definitely noticed when the second Robin disappeared from the face of the earth. He also recognized Batman's increasingly erratic and violent behavior, seeing the number of crooks that got in the Bat's way flooding the hospitals in increasingly worse conditions. Tim actually tracked me down, insisting that I needed to come back as Robin before Batman fell apart completely.  About six months after Jason died, Tim gathered the guts to confront Bruce himself, insisting Batman needs a Robin; a light to his darkness. And he was right," Dick states firmly, rising from the chair.

He smiles uncertainly at Damian, though it lacks his usual energy and warmth. "Well...now you're caught up on all the Robins, I guess. Ready for dinner? It's probably done by now, and you know what Alfred is like when we're late."

He heads for the stairs, only to pause at the bottom so Damian nearly collides with his back. The man licks his lips awkwardly, glancing down at Damian. "And...Li'l D? Don't...don't ask Bruce about Jason.  If you have any questions, come to me, okay?  He still blames himself for what happened..."

Damian nods solemnly,  still processing what he'd been told moments before and feeling almost like he's intruded on something sacred as he glances back at the now not-so-mysterious memorial case standing steadfast in the middle of the floor . "I won't say anything, Grayson," he promises, almost a whisper.

"Good."  Dick ruffles his hair affectionately, and for once Damian allows it as a more genuine smile appears on Dick's features.  "Let's go upstairs and see what Alfred's got for dinner, shall we?"

* * *

Dinner went by without anything major to talk about. Dick thanked Alfred for the meal and said his goodbyes to his family before departing from the manor for the evening. On his way back to Blüdhaven, Tim contacted him with the news that someone had abducted a politician. Upon arrival at his apartment, Dick changed into his Nightwing suit and took off.

"Did the abductor say anything about what he wants?" Nightwing asks over the comm as he swung between rooftops.

"A ransom of around three million dollars," Tim answers. "They're holding him in an abandoned brick building in southern Blüdhaven . Take the second street to your left, then follow it till you see Harold Street at your third right. Take another right at the fourth alley. You should see the building fairly easily."

"Thanks, baby bird," Dick says, leaping and grappling through the city.

Tim was right. The building really did stand out. Someone had smashed all the windows and barricaded them and the doors from the outside.  Not that that was anything new in Gotham, but the size of the building certainly contributed to the lonely, eeriness of the place.

Activating the heat sensor in his mask, he scans the building, counting a total of eleven people inside. He determines the only one sitting down and not moving to be the abducted politician. Two thugs are on the second floor, five slink on the third, three stand on the fourth and one patrols the roof. Judging by their statur e, all but one –  that one is sitting at a wall, surrounded by two goons –  of them hold guns.  He plot s their movements, studying the patterns the guards made as they walk in order to take them out, one by one, as silently as possible.

Nightwing changes his view to night vision and jumps towards the building, landing in the shadow of some air vents on the derelict roof.

The single guard paces from one end of the roof to the other, eyes alert as they flicker almost nervously over the area. As he moves past the air vents, Dick sneaks up from behind and strikes the back of his head with the handle of one of his escrima-sticks. Catching the unconscious man before he could hit the ground, Nightwing props him up against one of the vents and quickly ties his hands. Activating his heat sensor again, he glances at the points below him, ensuring that none of the others had noticed what happened above them. Back to night vision, he sneaks to the hatch that leads down to the fourth floor. Opening it carefully, he slips through and lands soundlessly in a crouch on the ground below.

The fourth floor reminds him of a massive office, but chock full of computers. One of the three criminals is peeking out the boards at the window, while the two others prowl separately at the entrance and roof hatch. The one who guarded the skylight obviously noticed Dick's peeking head.

Reflexively, he aims his gun at Nightwing and shoots, alerting the guard's buddies and probably the whole building in the process.

Well, this could have gone better.

Dodging the resulting rain of bullets, Dick throws a wing-ding at the one who first noticed him. The device strikes right in the barrel of the gun, rendering the weapon useless. By this time, the first criminal's fellows have overcome their shock and turned on Nightwing. The vigilante ducks behind a table as bullets fly past him, embedding themselves in the wall at his back. For a second, the hail of bullets stops – they're reloading, he realizes – and he takes advantage of the few precious seconds to throw two more wing-dings around the edge of his haven.

Dick hears a hiss of pain, a startled cry, and two metal clatters as his weapons found their marks: the hand of the thug at the window (who drops his weapon with a hiss) and the second which again sticks in the barrel of the final man's gun (drawing a surprised shout from its owner).

Gripping his escrima-sticks tightly in his hands, he dashes to the criminal who had been watching the exit, throwing up an arm to block a blow from the gun muzzle to his side. Grabbing hold of his opponent's shoulders before he can react, Nightwing vaults over him, landing gracefully on the ground behind him and kicking the legs out from under the criminal. The perp falls to the floor, momentarily stunned, and Nightwing knocks the man out with a sharp blow to his temple.

Satisfied the man was down for the count, he whirled around in time to greet the fellon's fellows, the first's fingers white around his shiny brass knuckles and the second taking up his gun in his uninjured hand. Somersaulting over the desks between him and the first criminal, he sends a well-aimed kick to the guard's solar plexus, knocking the wind out of him as the perp lets loose a pitiful groan. Nightwing snatches the man around the waist and chucks him over his shoulder, right into the second man who was attempting to rise again.

The two of them crash to the ground, the thug underneath moaning as his companion mashed his nose into the floor.

A shot rings out behind him, and Dick instinctively rolls out of the way as a bullet tears through the air where he'd been standing seconds before. He whirls around to see a fourth perp silhouetted in the doorway, gun already swinging around for another shot.

Looks like their little fight had been overheard. Perfect. 

Adrenaline surges through Nightwing's veins and he launches himself forward, dodging the man's second bullet and slipping under the thug's guard before he could gather the wits to pull the trigger a third time. With a crushing blow to the villain's hand (Dick hears and feels several bones snap), the gun falls from the perp's grasp and clatters away  as its owner opens his mouth to scream .

Seizing the opportunity, Dick rams the man in the chest, earning a muffled curse. His opponent thwacks him on the arm with his uninjured hand, and Nightwing counters with a heavy blow to the guy's head. As the thug stumbles backwards from the force of the strike, Dick puts the fight to an abrupt end with an escrima-stick to the neck.

Before Dick could even take a free breath, he jerks in surprise  as suddenly, gunshots echo from the floor below, muffled screams and curses following in quick succession. Confused, Nightwing rapidly zipties ties the four thugs together in the center of the room and sprints out the door  as the terrified shrieks of grown men rise from downstairs .

Cautiously, he creeps down the empty staircase, peering over the banister to ensure he wasn't about to be ambushed from below. The sounds stop as unexpectedly as they'd started, leaving the stairwell eerily quiet. At the foot of the staircase, the door leading onto the third floor stands strong and silent. Every one of his senses straining, he presses a hand to the push bar, escrima-stick at the ready. And then he bursts through the door into...the aftermath of a warzone.

The floor is covered in blood, bullet holes peppering the walls and ceiling. Tables are overturned and some even broken in half with paperwork soaking in a puddle of cooling blood. Crooks lie willy-nilly on the ground, limbs twisted at strange angles and even more red liquid oozing from various wounds. One man is even suspended by two knives on the wall and...is that one missing his  head ?!

Despite the gruesome scenes Dick has seen in his line of work, bile rises in his throat and he glances away from the corpses, instead  spotting one of the previously barred up windows had been broken into splinters;  an entry point.

Finally, his eyes find two shadowy shapes standing in the middle of the room. The first is clad in black, skin-tight leather with golden lines and a mask almost like a screech owl that hides his face completely from view. Some kind of orange goggles rest over his eyes. From what Nightwing can see, the person is armed to the teeth with throwing knives and daggers and who the hell knows what else in the pouches and sleeves on his belts. The second person is the missing politician judging by the (albeit tattered) suit and tie.

The terrified captive dangles by the neck from the hand of the black-clothed stranger, blue in the face from lack of oxygen. Nightwing would bet his life that the masked man was the cause of the violent carnage squelching under his feet.

The apparent assassin has his clawed gauntlet raised over the politician, and judging from the blood dripping from the bloody tips, they're about as sharp as they look.

"—of Owls has sentenced you to die, Mr. Anderson," the man was saying, his voice cold and void of any emotion.

Those words startle Nightwing out of his embarrassingly long stupor. Spinning his escrima-sticks, he launches himself at the murderer.  "Hey!" he yells, aiming to turn the stranger's attention away from the politician. 

As hoped, the mysterious man whirls to face him, orange goggles glinting in the pale light of the moon. And then he hurls the dangling man at Nightwing.

Scrambling to a slippery halt on the wet floor, Dick barely manages to catch the half-conscious politician in midair, easing him carefully to the ground. Keeping one eye trained on the assassin and body tense in case of attack, Dick waits a moment for the telltale gasp as the poor man at his feet fills his lungs with much needed air. Giving the former captive a quick once over for fatal injuries, Dick straightens and faces the latest threat of the evening who – for some unknown reason – hasn't attacked him yet.

"Well," the other sneers, "if it isn't the big Boy Wonder."

Nightwing narrows his eyes at the title.

"Did the  little bat come out to play with the owl?" he asks, grin obvious in his words.

Nightwing arches an eyebrow. "Not to be rude, but I didn't come here to  play ," he snaps coolly. "What's your business with this man?"  He gestures at the cowering politician.

Said politician cowers behind Nightwing's leg, pointing shakily at the bloody assassin. "Can't you see?!" he wails. "He wants to kill me! You've got to protect me!"

"If you didn't come out to play, then why did you come here?" the potential assassin continued,  ignoring the politician and seeming genuinely curious. "Don't you know that the sun has set?"

Well, now that just sounded mocking.

The stranger takes a step closer and Nightwing eyes him warily. Better keep an eye on those claws...

"What, are you afraid of the dark?" he counters as the man leans forward, Nightwing instinctively tensing at the movement.

"An owl is not afraid of the dark, birdy," the assassin says, one hand rising to his belt. " The dark is its domain, its home. It's where it hunts its prey."

The dagger appeared in the "owl's" hand so fast, Nightwing barely had time to shove the politician out of the way and throw up an escrima-stick to block the streaking metal toward his face. As the weapons clash, Dick almost stumbles at the unexpected force.

The power behind that single attack was immense.  Dick had better start using his brains, because it's all ready clear his brawn won't be enough to win this fight.

"Who are you working for?" Dick grunts, straining against the knife with one escrima-stick and lashing out at the man's torso with the other.

The assassin sways, avoiding the attack with ease, a knife spinning from his belt before Dick can even twitch and knife embedding itself in his shoulder. Hissing in pain, Nightwing staggers a step back, flinging a wing-ding in retaliation only for it to be effortlessly countered by yet another knife. Sparks fly as the two weapons clash midair.

Nightwing rushes the assassin and swipes at him with his two weapons, but the short metal staffs whistle through air as the crook kicks off the desk and lands lightly behind Dick.

"I work for the ones that you should be serving!" the assassin hisses angrily.

Dick leans away from the clawed hand slashing at him, the whistle of the metal through air only centimetres from his face. Flipping back, Nightwing lands on the table his opponent had abandoned moments before.

The words finally clicking in his mind now that he wasn't in immediate danger, Dick scowled. "What do you mean? Who the hell are you?"

"Wouldn't you like to know,"  the man chuckles, sounding somehow achingly familiar. "Unfortunately for you, an owl doesn't have to answer its prey."

Well, okay?

"But tell me," the assassin continues. "Why save this man? Don't you know what he's done, birdy?"

"It's my job to save people," Nightwing replies firmly. "I rescue them from men like you who decide to pass judgment for what you determine as right or wrong, regardless of what they actually did."

The assassin cocks his head, a gesture that would be almost endearing under other circumstances and  ringing a distant bell in Dick's mind. Who had he seen do that before...?

"I do not decide. I obey," the man snaps waspishly, venom dripping in every word. Suddenly, a glint of metal flashes in his hand.

Nightwing shouts, "Don't!" but the weapon has already left the gloved hand.

Anderson, who had managed to stagger halfway to the door without either of them noticing, lets out a pained cry, collapsing bonelessly to the floor.

A puddle of blood spreads instantaneous beneath him from the dagger protruding in his chest.

Nightwing curses, dashing to the fallen man's side. Judging by the choked noises, rattling breaths and the blood on the man's lips, the knife had punctured a lung. Dick can't do anything to for a wound like that. Pressing a button on his belt to send an automated message to the authorities , he whirls angrily to face the murderer, only to find he no longer he'd moved and now crouched in the only open windowsill, silhouetted by the silvery moonlight.

"We will meet again, birdy," the assassin assures him as Nightwing rockets toward him, desperately flicking a couple wing-dings in his direction.

The man almost casually leans out of the window with outstretched arms, falling backwards into open air. By the time Dick reaches the window and looks down, there's no trace of the assassin.

"God dammit!" Dick swears, returning to the politician's side. But the man's glassy eyes stare right through him. He's dead.

* * *

"...and then he just tipped out the window, Anderson choked on his own blood, and there was absolutely nothing I could do!"

Frustrated, Dick paces the floor of his tiny living room. He's already changed into his civilian clothes. On his desk is his laptop, through which Bruce stares back at him through the video chat, appearing equally annoyed and interested by this turn of events.

"And you've never seen him before?" Bruce questions, a frown creasing his features as he watches Dick stride back and forth, back and forth. "Or is there anything else you recognized that would be important?"

"Besides the fact that he used the same weapon we found in that mugger's back?" Dick shakes his head. "No, I didn't recognize anything..." He trails off, but Bruce notices his hesitance.

"But?" he prods.

Dick stops his pacing and turns to Bruce.  "But what?"

"What are you thinking?"

Running a hand through his hair, Dick sighs. "His fighting style seems familiar," he admits, "but I can't place it. He also always referred to himself as an owl and said something about a Court, but I don't know what he meant." He paces silently for a few seconds, only to stop moments later. "And when I asked him whom he is working for, he said that he works for the people I should be serving… It doesn't make sense."

He turns back to Bruce, confusion and worry etched in his expression and leaking into his words. "Any idea what he could have meant?"

Bruce remains silent, eyes narrowed in thought. For a moment, he disappears from the screen and Dick thinks for a moment the older man had hung up when he suddenly reappears.

"There's an old Gotham nursery rhyme that's supposed to scare children," Bruce starts slowly. "My parents once told it to me." Another pause. "If I remember correctly, it goes something like this: Beware The Court of Owls, that watches all the time, ruling Gotham from a shadow perch, behind granite and lime. They watch you at your hearth, they watch you in your bed, speak not a whispered word of them or they'll send The Talon for your head."

Dick raises an eyebrow. "But it's just that isn't it?" he says. "Just an old nursery rhyme."

"That's what I believe," Bruce agrees. "Until now, I have had no reason to question it. However, from your account, it you woud seem you might have met the Talon." After a moment of deathly silence Bruce adds, voice serious: "Be careful Dick. We don't know anything about this Court that its assassin spoke about, or if it even exists."

"Besides the fact that they kill people, apparently," Dick adds sourly, which earns him a disapproving glance from Bruce. He sighs. "Yeah, yeah, I get it, Bruce. Don't make fun of the enemy." He moves towards his laptop. "And what about the second part? The part about him working in my place?"

"I'll look into that," Bruce promises, eyebrows furrowing.

Dick sighs and nods."Okay. I'll come over tomorrow, okay?" Bruce nods at that. "Great. Please notify Alf of my imminent arrival." Smiling, he ends the call and closes the laptop.

Turning abruptly, he slumps against the couch and sighs. Not only couldn't he save an innocent today, but he also hadn't captured the man's murderer. And if that wasn't bad enough, it seemed they have a whole Court of those assassins running around. Great…

Dick throws his arm over his eyes, moaning quietly. He's exhausted, but the criminals never seem to take a break, so he can't either. Not to mention that  that day is coming up here...

Nope. He doesn't want to think about it.

Huffing, he rests for a few minutes on his couch, but the thoughts won't go away. Giving into the memories, he gets up,  moving to his bedroom and opening his sock drawer to pull out  an old picture of him in costume, grinning widely at the younger boy crouched at his side. The boy wears his old Robin costume, complete with yellow cape, pixie boots, and oh my, those scaly pants!

Dick smiles sadly at the memory of him and Jason together on the rooftop, chowing down on ice-cream that he'd bought with the remnants of his pocket change. He had no idea who had taken the picture. Maybe Bruce? Yeah, good old memories…

The smile drops as he remembers he'll never be able to share such moments with his baby brother ever again...

Shaking his head against the depressing thoughts threatening to overwhelm his brain, he turns away from the picture feeling simultaneously better and worse than he had moments before.

Well...time to pack for his journey to Gotham.


	3. Revelations

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you very much for the Kudos and the Bookmarks!  
> I am very happy that people like to read the story :)
> 
> Without further ado, I present the next chapter <3

* * *

**III. Revelations**

Beta-read by RascalJoy on FF.net

* * *

 

There's this feeling of emptiness inside him, like he's lost something. Something important. The others, his Master mostly, were intrigued as to how on earth Jason was still alive after he had clearly been blown into pieces by the Joker. Unfortunately, even Jason himself isn't exactly sure.

What happened before he came to this place, before he had been put in a tank in which they did whoever knows what to him?

Jason rarely has time to think, let alone take the time to piece together his fractured memories. So he does it little bits at a time, during his silent waiting and watching before a kill, in the moonlit hours of the night just before he goes to sleep, and sometimes even in the middle of one of his frequent sojourns in the dreaded white room. What he has managed to remember is both satisfying and simultaneously frustrating, gaping holes glaring in his mind where he knows something should be, but isn't. Jason hopes to change that.

It all started with Talia al Ghul. He knows that at some point the assassin had taken him off the streets of Gotham where he had roamed after his violent grave escape for...a few days? Weeks? Time is difficult to track when you're not in your right state of mind. She had thrown him into something green, bubbly, and hot, and he'd blacked out for a short amount of time. The next thing he knew he was lying face down on a riverbed, arms bent at an unnatural angle and obviously broken.

Then there was a new person, clad in black and gold. A Talon. He had fallen back into unconsciousness just as the man had begun to lift him off the ground. The next time he'd woken up, it was in a goddamn tank that was filled with this vibrant green liquid—different from what Talia had put him in—his hands chained over his head and a breathing mask over his mouth and nose. His body had felt like it was burning, his flesh withering from whatever they'd injected him with as the tubes irritated his skin where they connected.

His next memories were in a haze, as if he had been in a fevered dream behind the glass of his cage. He remembers bits and pieces, but not much detail. There were people in front of him, people clad in white – scientists? – and they were writing something on clipboards, but he couldn't figure out what as the "water" blurred his vision, his eyes roaring with pain so he would've scratched them out if his arms could move.

One last thought drifted through his foggy mind before he had fallen into the blissful depths of unconsciousness:  _What did they do to me?_

Time fast forwards in his memories, and the next thing he knew he was trapped in a sort of maze, wandering around without any direction or purpose. He wasn't sure what time or day it was – not that he'd known before – but he somehow knew that it didn't matter anyway. At least not while they still had him in this place.

At the presumed center of the labyrinth, he recalled staring up at a statue of a giant owl, at the base of which stood his now master flanked by two other people clad in black suits and blank, white masks resembling the face of a barn owl. They congratulated him – he didn't know why.

Upon his removal from the maze, he'd found his trials were not yet over. The training he received was brutal, to say the least. After all, he was being trained to kill. Only the strongest survived. He'd killed – murdered – his competitors, the ones who were – just like himself – candidates to be the next Talon. One by one he killed them all without remorse - at least, that's what he told himself **-** for the sole purpose of surviving to see the sunrise on the next day. His moves were fluent and efficient, striking down his opponents with a combination of skills he remembered from his Robin days and newer, bloodier moves that the Court had beat into him.

Despite it all, Jason was not fond of killing the others. Most of them were his age or even younger, and at first it sickened him at what he himself would do just to survive the night. But as time went on, it became easier and easier. He told himself he hated it, but he was just so  _good_ at it. And although he'd never admit it out loud, the thrill that shivered down his spine as he hunted his prey, the adrenaline pumping through what was left of his veins, the satisfaction of his knives thudding home into warm flesh, was actually...exciting.

The Court had been fascinated by him, said he would be a great asset, and with more training could perhaps become even better than the one they'd first set their eyes on.

Needless to say, Jason obeyed them. From day one they instructed him to never question the Court; told him that the Court would be his new home, that any escape attempt would be punished and there would always be eyes watching him from the shadows. He could not escape their clutches.

"Don't disappoint us, Talon. We have so many plans with you," they had said. "With you in our ranks, we will further succeed in our cause."

With a start, he drops out of his reminisces, sitting upright on his bed in the dark room. He's lain here far too long.

Clambering out of the bed, he quickly dresses in his Talon attire, restocking the throwing knives he'd lost in last night's battle. A content sigh escapes him as he grips his trusted blades. Not that he doesn't trust his handlers – which he doesn't, really – but he always feels safer with his weapons at hand, to have something tangible to defend himself with. One can never be too careful living in a building full of highly trained assassins.

Just as Jason exits his room, he spots one of the resurrected Talons gliding his way. Instinctively knowing he was being summoned to his Master, he follows the undead man.

They walk down a familiar hallway, and Jason's heart thumps nervously in his chest as his fellow Talon pulls open the ornate doors to reveal the courtroom of the Court of Owls. He's always hated this room. The massive balcony on which everyone sat, staring down accusingly from every corner at his lone figure thirty feet below, always made him feel like he was a mildly interesting bug under a microscope.

As such, a shiver runs down Jason's spine as he follows the undead man into the room. He can feel rather than see all the eyes of the members of the Court of Owls resting on him as he moves to the center of the hall, can hear whispers echoing off the walls as he removes his hood and respectfully falls to one knee before his superiors. The room collapses into silence as his Master comes forth from behind the masses, pausing at the boundary of the balcony. His white, expensive suit makes a stark contrast among the black attire of the others. Like always, his Master looks expectantly down at him.

"Talon," his Master addresses. "We congratulate you on your latest kill." His Master walks around the boundaries of the platform, the glaring black holes in his mask never leaving Jason. The members of the Court are nodding in agreement around him. Jason inclines his head in acknowledgement.

"Although..."

Oh no. Jason had done something wrong. They only say more if he performed inadequately…

"It has come to our attention that you have been seen by a little chirping bird."

Jason blinks in black and blue vigilante? What did _he_ have to do with anything?

"Why didn't you kill him, Talon?" his Master demands.

Ah.

Jason knows that if his answer is not sufficient, his Master wouldn't hesitate to punish him accordingly for his mistake. Mind racing a mile a minute, he finally answers: "I didn't think it was necessary to kill him at that time, Master. He didn't seem to be a threat to our cause."

Murmurs break out in the room, the members of the Court conversing in their seats. Some sound pleased; some angry. His Master continues pacing, one eye on his Court, the other on his Talon. After a minute or two of staring in which Jason continued to kneel, his Master finally returns to the podium at the front.

"Then so be it," says the voice of his Master, and the Court falls silent. "Your next target will be that man."

For some reason, Jason feels his heart ache in his chest, but nods anyway. "What is the name of my prey, Master?" he requests respectfully. Of course he knows his target's name, how could he forget the reason why he's here in the first place…

"His name is Richard John Grayson," the man before him replies. "He is a vigilante under the name of Nightwing and was once under the wing of Batman as Robin." Jason can feelhis Master's eyes boring into him, studying him, mentally filling in the blanks:  _The_  first Robin...

Jason nods. "Dead or alive, Master?" he questions, gaze fixed on the ground.

Again, the footsteps can be heard. His Master is pacing again.

"The best choice would be to kill him," his superiors states. "However..." The pacing stops somewhere to his left. "If you have the chance, bring him to us. Alive."

The message could not be clearer:  _We see potential for another addition to our cause._  Mentally, he snorts. Yeah, right. While he does wish that his brightly colored predecessor would just drop dead, he still doesn't want anyone to relive what he had gone through in the past years. Dickie-bird would probably break should he ever have to kill a child… Heh. At least at one thing he could be better at than the golden boy, even if it would be something so gruesome as that. He tenses as suddenly the members of the Court rise from their seats. All move as one to the exit, until only he and his Master are left.

"Do not disappoint me, my Talon," his Master rumbles. He strides out of the room.

Finally rising from his kneeling position, Jason glances around towards the door from which he'd entered the room earlier. The Talon who had led him there is nowhere to be seen. Slipping out alone and closing the door, he lets out a breath he didn't know he had been holding.

 _Dickie-bird, eh…_ He tells himself the gaping hole in his chest is because of his Master's disappointment at his failure.

Stepping away from the door with narrowed eyes, he heads towards his room to plan the following nights. After all, he has fresh prey to catch.

* * *

The next morning, Dick arrives at the mansion around nine, bag slung over one shoulder. Alfred meets him at the door, already in his trademark suit with a small smile on his face.

"Master Dick, what a pleasure to see you," the butler greets, holding out his hand for his jacket and the bag.

Complying, Dick gives him the items in question as he steps across the threshold. "You too, Alfie. Nice to be back."

Without warning, a Great Dane bounds down the stairs, followed closely by its owner. The dog clatters to a halt at Dick's feet, practically vibrating in excitement.  _Woof!_

Dick scratches Titus behind his ears, and the excited dog responds by waggling his tail rapidly, licking Dick's other hand.

"Hey Ace," Dick chuckles, "miss me?"

"His name is Titus, not Ace, Grayson. I thought I've told you this before." Damian steps around the slobbering dog, folding his arms stubbornly over of his chest.

Dick grins at his little brother. "Aww, don't be like that, Dami. You know that he'll always be Ace to me. Besides," he continues as an afterthought, absently scratching the dog's ears. "He listens to both names anyway."

"Tt. You call him that so often, the dumb dog thinks it is actually his name," Damian snaps, clearly not pleased with the situation. "Father gave him to me, not you, Grayson." Abruptly turning, he whistles sharply. Titus's ears perk up and he scrambles to follow his owner from the room.

"Nice to see you too, little D!" Dick calls after him. Dick fixes his attention back on Alfred, who is still standing by the door. "I guess Bruce is in the basement?"

"Master Bruce is currently out of the house. He should be back in a few hours. However, Master Tim should be there at the moment," Alfred informs, already heading for the 'basement's' hidden entrance.

Upon entering the Cave, Dick immediately spots Tim at the computer. The teenager is glaring at the screen, a scowl etched on his face.

"Thanks Alf," says Dick as they reach the end of the staircase.

The butler nods. "Shall I arrange to have one more person for lunch and dinner, young Master?"

"Sure. I've really missed Alfred-food these last few days," Dick admits with a grin.

Alfred smiles his thanks, ascending the stairs again.

Looking back at Tim, Dick heads toward him.

"Who's ruffled your feathers so bad that you're taking it out on the computer?" he jokes. Tim glances at Dick for a second, scowl lessening, though not all at once.

"Hey, Dick," Tim greets, already back to glaring at the screen. "There's supposed to be a robbery going down tonight, but these idiots can't seem to decide which bank they want to go after."

Dick glances at the screen. A silent recording in black and white from a warehouse in the docks plays out on the monitor. There are several men crouch around a round table, apparently discussing something. One man points at one of four markers on a map of Gotham on the tabletop. All four markers are over what Dick recognizes to be bank locations.

"Why not stop them now while they're still in the planning stages?" Dick asks.

The younger man sighs and leans back in his chair. "This is just one part of the group," he answers. "There are two more groups waiting for directions in unknown locations. If we take these guys down now, the others could fade into the background until the heat's off before attempting it again."

Dick nods. "Makes sense to wait then." He steps away from the computer, focusing on the glass case beside it containing the mysterious dagger. A little throwing knife (the one pulled from his shoulder) had joined it. It's small, only a bit smaller than his hand, perfectly balanced and sharp as hell. He would know – he got hit by one of them.

"Did the search come up with something while I was away?" Dick questions as he inspects the weapons.

Tim twirls around in his chair, following Dick's gaze.

"Unfortunately, no. There doesn't seem to be a single piece of information anywhere on those weapons." Tim huffs, shaking his head in annoyance. "Probably crafted by this Court themselves. It's a plausible reason as to why I can't find anything."

"Mm, probably," Dick concedes. "Want to spar?" he says suddenly, smirking at the third Robin.

Tim looks a bit confused at the sudden subject change, but stands nonetheless.

"Sure. Why not? But don't hold back, alright?" Tim flashes a grin of his own at Dick, who nods with enthusiasm.

"Wouldn't have it any other way," he chuckles.

After about an hour, the two stop, sweaty, but happy. The final count was seven to three in Dick's favor, and he good-naturedly teases Tim as they change out of their training clothes. The roaring of an engine catches their attention and, as if on cue, the batmobile roars into the cave. The car comes to a halt, and Batman slides out of the driver seat, cape swirling around him. He nods briefly at his two wards, then turns to the changing room. Minutes later, he strides out again in his civilian clothes.

"You're early," Bruce addresses Dick.

Dick rolls his eyes at the abrupt greeting, smiling nonetheless. "Hello to you, too. So, anything of interest while you were out? Did you see him?" "Him" didn't need any further defining.

"No." Short and to the point. Just like always.

Dick sighs. "Alright then." He moves towards the entrance of the stairwell. "Guess I'll head upstairs. Call me if there's anything new." Bounding up the staircase, he waves briefly at the two before disappearing from view.

Time flew past quickly. Dinner is no exception, and before he knows it, Tim is calling them down to the cave. The teen is perched at the computer as if he'd never moved, a map with two dots blinking on the screen before him. Damian stands near the batmobile, Bruce a bit off to the side fixing the gauntlets of the Batsuit. Tim is already in his Red Robin outfit when Dick emerges from the changing room, hopping on one foot as he fixes the strap on his other boot.

"Is there a reason why you ordered all of us downstairs, Drake?" Damian demands imperiously, glancing at Tim with disinterest.

Red Robin points at the two dots on the map. "Apparently, the group I told Dick about earlier today decided to split up for reasons currently unknown," he starts, Dick, Bruce and Damian instinctively crowding around the screen. "Their primary goal is the Gotham Central Bank, to be hit with the main body of mooks. The second, smaller group is supposed to hit one of the smaller banks to the north."

Bruce whirls around, cape whooshing behind him as he strides towards his car. "Nightwing and I will take the Central Bank," he rumbles over his shoulder. "Red Robin and Robin, take the other group."

"Tt." Behind him, Damian scowls. "I am _not_ going with Drake," he snaps disapprovingly.

"This is not up for discussion, Robin," Bruce orders sternly.

Damian's scowl deepens, arms crossing over his chest, but doesn't object any further.

Nightwing casually ruffles the younger boy's hair, ignoring the disgruntled 'tt.' "Don't worry, Little D. We'll patrol together soon, 'kay?"

Damian hums under his breath. "As you say, Grayson."

Shooting his two brothers a quick smile, Dick moves away from the computer to slip next to Bruce in the batmobile. Two seatbelt clicks and a roar of the engine later, they speed out of the cave into Gotham City.

* * *

"Nightwing, do you copy?" Bruce's – Batman's voice calls over the communicator. They had arrived approximately five minutes ago at the Gotham Central Bank – just in time for it to start raining – and had split up to cover all bases. While Nightwing himself waits on top of the building across the street from the bank, Batman is scouting out the inside for all the gang members. According to Bruce, there are around twelve on the first and second floors with seven more on the third. Around the corner in an alley, they'd spotted three vans probably intended for the robbers' escape.

"Nightwing here," he answers, studying the bank and surrounding area below. Somewhere above him, thunder booms. "Read you loud and clear."

"I'll take care of the first floor," Batman continues. Over the comm, Dick can hear him already moving, the cape fluttering in his wake as he searches out his starting angle. "You start at the top, work your way down. Will meet on the second floor. Clear?"

Dick nods, even though the gesture is completely lost over the comm. "Crystal," he answers. "Take out the goons on the third floor and meet you in the middle."

"Good. Engaging now. Batman out." The line crackles, then goes silent.

Nightwing sighs. "Great," he huffs, pulling out his grapnel.

He can hear faint gunshots and shouts coming from inside the bank as Batman begins his attack.

Moving down the roof, Dick grapples towards the opposite building. Feet first, he crashes through a third-floor window, shards flying all around him. Apparently, luck is on his side as he falls through the opening: his kicked out legs hit one of the perps square in the chest. The man stumbles, flying back against a wall. He's out cold before he even knew what hit him.

Turning around, Nightwing realizes that he's landed in a corridor. Further down is a door, slightly ajar. He can hear feet shuffling inside, and suddenly two men burst from the room, alerted by the loud smack their buddy had made when he'd hit the wall.

Nightwing drops to a crouch as a hailstorm of bullets whiz over his head. Running low to the ground towards the gunners, he pulls his escrima-sticks from his belt. Abruptly, Nightwing changes directions, throwing off the shooters' aim as they try to follow his path with their gun barrels. He uses the left wall as a launch pad, startling the perps as he rockets feet first toward them and kicks the nearest one in the side, sending him reeling. Using the impact of the attack to twirl a 180, he brings down his weapons on the second criminal's shoulders.

The man drops the gun with a cry. Taking the opportunity, Nightwing deals a nerve strike to his neck, and the man slumps, unconscious, to the ground. Three down, four to go…

As if on cue, another door behind him opens with a creak, a new wave of robbers swirling through the opening. Suddenly, two strong arms wrap around his upper torso, trapping his arms at his sides while footsteps sound closer. Digging his elbow into the ribs of his captor, Nightwing wriggles free as the man releases him with a gasp. Nightwing whirls around, one escrima-stick raised, and strikes the criminal in the temple.

Glancing up sharply at the click of another gun, he sprints towards the door from which the first two men came from. Just as he dIves through the opening, the hallway explodes with light from another wave of gunfire. Crouching a short distance from the door, he waits for the inevitable lull as the gunners reload. Without warning, he hears the sharp sound of glass—a window—shattering somewhere on his floor, immediately followed by fresh gunshots from a presumably different group in the direction of the sound.

Had Batman already finished the gunmen on the first floor...? Nah, that was too quick; even for Batman.

Nightwing hears the murmuring voices of the perps in the now speeding-bullet-free corridor, cursing and arguing as they dash toward the new ruckus farther down the hall. Cautiously poking his head around the door, he spots them just as the last one slides into another room near the middle of the corridor. Nightwing tiptoes from his hiding spot, sneaking down the hall toward the mysterious other room. Shouts and screams echo from the interior, and he carefully moves to peek inside... **Shouts and screams echo from the interior, and he carefully moves to peek inside...** and one of the gunmen falls backwards out the door—dead. Instantly, he notices the weapon emerging from the man's bloody throat, and freezes.

Quickly, he opens a line in his comm: "B, Nightwing here."

From the other end, he hears shooting, swearing and shouting – Batman's clearly not finished yet – and after a short moment, he hears Bruce's voice. "Batman here. What's wrong?"

"We might have a problem," Nightwing admits in a low voice, glancing into the now eerily silent room. The rest of the guards on the third floor had been totally annihilated, glazed eyes staring up at the ceiling and blood dripping from their open mouths. "Seems like our mysterious assassin is already here." The symbol on the knife was unmistakeable.

"Hnn," is the only answer. Typical Batman.

Nightwing moves further into the room, eyes and ears training on every shadow, every body, as he searches for signs of life, may it be a survivor or the murderer himself. The insides of the room reveal it to be some sort of boardroom. In the middle, a big round table that might've been worth a fortune a couple minutes ago stands surrounded by chairs. The walls are decorated with paintings and a few smaller refreshment tables are lined up in the corner. It's expensive; quaint in its own now, the owners probably need to look into getting it renovated. The floor is stained with blood, and dead bodies certainly don't count as decorations.

Ghosting between the three men, he minutely notices the battered and torn skin. He arches an eyebrow at one of them, examining the painfully torn throat. Another one is stuck at the wall, knives embedded in his shoulders and hands as his screaming mouth gapes down at him.

Nightwing tenses, suddenly alert. Had it not been for his intense training, he probably would have missed the near-silent sound of a blade being brandished. Reflexively rolling out of the way, he just barely avoids being impaled by a dagger thrown from above. Somersaulting on the ground, he uses his momentum to rocket to his feet, turning to face the new threat with escrima-sticks raised in defense.

And there stands the assassin. Nightwing briefly wonders how the guy managed to stick to the ceiling – without Dick even noticing at that.

The Talon holds his dagger in a reverse hold before him, the other taloned hand curiously empty. Nightwing would need to watch out for the claws sewn on the gauntlets. Studying the Talon warily, he can almost feel the blood lust radiating from the other man as Dick drops into a more aggressive stance. Somehow, the mysterious assassin seems even more dangerous than last time…

"Richard Grayson," the murderer snorts disdainfully, and Nightwing almost flinches. This man knows his name? That does not bode well for him; not at all.

He's so startled, he almost misses the man's next words: "The Court of Owls has sentenced you to death."

Tightening his grip on his weapons, Nightwing's eyes narrow behind his mask. "Great. Now it's personal."

The assassin tilts his head almost curiously. "You're not going to run, birdy?"

That almost causes Nightwing to give an amused smirk - almost. "I didn't run away last time, as you probably noticed." Then, he frowns, realizing something: "Why did the Court send you to kill that kidnapped man last time?" he asks, equally curious as angry. "He was innocent!"

The assassin stares at him for a moment before shaking his head, letting out a dark chuckle. "Your precious senator had been working together with his abductors. After they got the ransom they were going to split up the money between them. Not so innocent now, right? You should be happy. I'm doing you a favor picking out the rotten tomatoes of society."

Nightwing can almost hear the smirk in his voice.

This time, Dick shakes his head, unwilling to let it go. "Even if what you say is true," he says carefully, eyes fixed on the assassin. "You can't just go around killing anyone you want to!"

"It's what the Court wants," the Talon snaps bitterly, slight anger underlining his voice.

Nightwing's eyes narrow further. "But is it what  _you_ want?"

The Talon tenses slightly – so slight that Nightwing would have missed it if he hadn't been looking so closely. "You're not here willingly, are you." A statement, not a question.

The air is almost icy with tension as the assassin speaks up, almost reciting: "What I want doesn't matter. I serve the Court because I must, not because I want to – I am theirs to command as they deem fit."

Before Nightwing can question him further, Talon charges. Nightwing does the same, escrima-sticks raised to attack or defend depending on the circumstances. He strikes out with his right weapon, which is blocked immediately by the free gauntlet as the assassin counters with his dagger to Nightwing's face. Nightwing repels the attack with his other weapon, then drops to a crouch and attempts to ram the Talon's legs, only for his opponent to leap over him. Spinning around, the Talon falls to a crouch himself and spins two knives toward Nightwing. Dick quickly counters with a couple wing-dings, slicing the weapons from the air.

"Why do you listen to what the Court tells you?" Nightwing demands, somersaulting away from another knife. He jumps to the side as the Talon aims for his chest with a taloned gauntlet. Grabbing the Talon's arm as he stumbles past, Nightwing uses the momentum to throw his opponent into a nearby table. The top breaks apart as the Talon crashes into it, yet the Talon is on his feet instantly, like he either didn't care or just didn't feel any pain from the violent impact.

When he finally responds, the Talon sounds slightly frustrated; "I am a Talon for the Court of Owls," he grinds out. "It is my duty to listen to their orders and carry them out. It doesn't matter what I think or feel about it."

Two more knives fly from his hands, and Nightwing knocks them from their path with his escrima-sticks. He realizes too late that he'd done exactly what the assassin wanted. Cursing, he whirls around just in time to block the deadly claws on the Talon's left hand; but he's not quick enough to stop the dagger. He hisses in pain as the blade cuts into his left shoulder.

Jerking back in time to save himself from anything worse than a flesh wound, Nightwing dodges another swing of the dagger as he shuffles backward, trying to keep a bit of distance between the two of them.

"Have you ever tried to take matters into your own hands?" Dick asks after a minute of trying to evade the fast attacks, which had so far earned him another cut on his forearm and scratches across his cheek from the deadly gauntlet. "To leave the Court behind?"

"I can't," the Talon snaps, though he almost sounded…sad?

As they continue to fight, a strange feeling that had been slowly nagging at him since the start of the battle finally begins to take shape… Well, perhaps strange is the wrong word; familiar might be a better choice. Dick's eyebrows furrow in concentration as he tries to remember if he's fought with this man before, studying the somehow familiar cadence of his movements: the way he grips the knife so familiarly in his hand; the all-too ready fists flying into every opening Nightwing gave; the way he positions his feet in every stance, ready to move at the slightest sign of danger... But this is the first time he's ever encountered this man...right? He's never seen nor heard of either him or the Court of Owls before. So why does it feel like he's known this assassin for so much longer? Almost as if...as if he's fought side-by-side with him in one lifetime…

No. That doesn't make any sense; none at all.

Static fills his ear, which startles Nightwing for a second: "Nightwing, this is Batman."

Good lord, he'd almost forgotten this wasn't a solo flight.

"Finishing up the second floor. Unexpected reinforcements arrived." Which pretty much translated to, 'Sorry I'm late. Keep the assassin busy, will arrive any minute.'

Assured help was on the way, Nightwing returns his full attention to the fight. He quickly decides they need a location change. It's a wonder nobody has slipped yet on the bloody floor, or even tripped over the bodies.

Rotating around towards the nearest window – which is already broken anyway from the Talon's presumed entrance – he jumps out, Talon hot on his heels. Grappling to the top, he rolls across the roof to dampen the force of his fall. Not two seconds later, his opponent lands on the other side of the roof, dark tinted goggles fixed on him.

"Running away now?" asks the man, tilting his head once again. "I can give you a two-minute head start."

How very generous of him.

"I'll pass," Nightwing says, smirking lightly. "Just thought we could use a bit of fresh air."

By now, the rain is pouring down mercilessly, soaking the two of them straight to the skin. Lightning flashes above them, thunder roaring in their ears. And that's when Nightwing notices something else: the man almost always turns away a little bit whenever lightning strikes.

 _Is he not used to light?_ he wonders. However, he has no time to think on it further as the man comes at him again. Not giving him a break, huh?

Dick swivels to avoid the throwing knives – just how many does this guy have? – and sidesteps another attack that would have gutted him. Nightwing is really not loving that gauntlet…

Dick strikes out with his escrima-stick and it collides with the man's forearm, just reflecting another dagger with his second weapon. Spinning around, he slams a blow across the man's back. Dick would have expected to at least hear a hiss or a gasp or something, but once again, the man doesn't even flinch at the attack.

Nightwing reacts a bit too late as he notices the other moving. Suddenly, a strong hand is digging into his injured shoulder, ripping the skin beneath it. He hisses in pain as he's suddenly thrown across the roof, landing hard on the same shoulder on the unforgiving concrete. Struggling to get to his feet despite the agony ripping through his ravaged joint, Dick is too slow to avoid the rapid punch to his solar plexus, and he gasps at the pain that erupts through his abdomen, doubling over instinctively.

Talon takes the opportunity.

The next thing Nightwing knows, he's on his back with the assassin perched on top of him. His arms are immobilized, trapped beneath the assassin's thighs. However, the most pressing problem might be the dagger pressed against his throat.

 _Now would be a great time for Batman_ to swoop in and save the day _, Bruce…_ he thinks, glaring up at the hooded face of his captor.

"Any last words, birdy?" oozes the Talon.

"I guess I'm out of the options, right?" Nightwing jokes half-heartedly, fighting back a wince as the stones beneath him dig at his shoulder.

The man on top of him continues to stare. Then, "Why didn't you run before? When you still could?"

Why does the assassin suddenly sound...upset?

"Why would I?" counters Nightwing. "So that you could kill the others, and still get me later? It's my job to protect people, in case you didn't notice."

Talon shakes his head, a dry laugh echoing from underneath the hood. "Then why didn't you save me…?" he whispers, almost inaudible.

And then Nightwing realizes the blade of the dagger is trembling in the man's hand. Internally, he is surprised and confused by the sudden change in the man's attitude. But on the outside, he remains calm; he certainly doesn't want to get killed just by moving the wrong way.

"Tell me what happened," Nightwing says steadily; genuinely.

"Don't you see, Dick?"

Nightwing tenses. How does this guy know…?

"I can't be saved, **"** the assassin finishes savagely.

"Tell me what happened so I can help you," Dick tries again. As long he keeps the other talking, Nightwing can stall until Batman arrives; and try to identify the other's voice.

"Still as stubborn as ever," the man chuckles drily. "At least that hasn't changed,  _Dickiebird_."

And then it hits him like a punch to his face. Dick knows who this is. But...it's not possible. Time seems to stand still as they lay on the rooftop, the only sound he hears being the calm breathing of the other still trapping him. How could Dick not have recognized him sooner? The fighting style, the nicknames...

 _Because he's supposed to be dead, Dick_ _,_ his brain supplies.  _The dead don't rise from their graves._

"I see you've made the connection," the assassin sneers, and Nightwing freezes. Not because of the danger he's in, or the wet feeling of his kevlar suit soaked with rainwater, but because the other knows that Dick has figured out who he is; and Dick is right.

In the next moment, a batarang flies through the rain as lightning flashes, throwing the dagger across the roof. Taking advantage of the moment of surprise, Nightwing bucks the other off of him as Batman swoops toward them, launching another batarang.

The assassin rolls away, but not before the batarang pins his hood to the roof and rips it clean off. As the man turns around to face them, Nightwing pales as his suspicions are confirmed. Batman freezes altogether. Because the last time they saw that face was years ago, at a funeral which should never have happened in the first place.

It just can't be… But yet there the man stands; the same face, just older, sharper, and deadlier than they ever remembered it.

Life is never fair it seems, not even for the dead.

When Batman speaks, it's husky and disbelieving: "Jason…"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes:
> 
> This chapter is not yet beta read, but I wanted to change the previous chapters to the current story line.
> 
> Please notice, that Chapter II. / III. / IV. are at the moment read by my beta and will be updated soon.
> 
> After the chapters are updated, I will continue with chapter V.


	4. No Way Out

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes:
> 
> This chapter is not yet beta read, but I wanted to change the previous chapters to the current story line.
> 
> Please notice, that Chapter II. / III. / IV. are at the moment read by my beta and will be updated soon.
> 
> After the chapters are updated, I will continue with chapter V.

 

 

 

* * *

IV. No Way Out

To be beta-read (update note will follow)

* * *

This is wrong. So totally and utterly _wrong_. This just can't be right. Nightwing takes a shaky step forward, not even blinking as he does so in fear that all of this is just some kind of bad joke from the gods. Or perhaps this is some kind of hallucination and if he blinks the person before him will be gone the next time he blinks. Next to him Batman stands still, frozen to the spot. Were it not for the cape, one would say that he almost passes as a statue.

He looks at the face of the other man, a face that he had doubted he would ever see again, at least until he himself would be six feet under. The black hair – besides the fact that it is soaked by the water by now and stuck to the forehead – is a bit longer than usual and  _is that a white streak?_  Nightwing does a double take and  _yes_  that is really his hair. Probably dyed? Anyway, he would recognize that face everywhere, every nook and every angle is stuck in his mind as if it were yesterday.

The man looks to be in his early twenties, which would fit if the Jason he once knew were still alive. But those eyes… The once kind and glittering eyes that were full of mischief are now staring furiously and dull at the two of them. Where once a bright blue was shining is now a sharp gold with a vibrant green hue.

Nightwing takes another step further and would have taken another if the man in front of him wouldn't have reached to the second dagger from his belt. Immediately, he stops in his tracks just as Batman holds out his hand in front of him to hinder him to move any further. Dick looks up to his mentor and sees the firm line his lips had build while they watched the young man before them.

Turning back to the other person, Nightwing notices his stance that tells them to not move any further, but beneath that he can also read the uncertainty and the hesitation. Most people would probably have missed that if they would not pay a lot of attention, but he did.

"Is… Is that really you, Jason?" he asks carefully and notices the other looking at him. Just how much would he give if this man is really the man he wishes him to be… how much he wishes to see that mischievous smirk on that face instead of the glare every time he turns to look at Bruce in his Batman attire or Dick himself.

"Finally it clicked in your birdbrain it seems," Now, without the hood, the voice just sounds  _right._  It's the voice he had heard all those years ago, even though now its more mature and colder than before. "Took you long enough, Dickface" Jason says and his voice is as cold as ice, but  _his_  voice nonetheless.

This time, Batman takes a step closer, but then the man bolts. He jumps over the edge of the building as Nightwing shouts 'Wait!' and Batman runs after him with his partner hot on his heels. Grappling around a building, he outruns his mentor and follows the Ta-  _Jason_ , that just  _must_  be him! At least he wishes it to be him…

Jason crashes through a window of another building next to him, rolls on the ground and uses the momentum to stand up and continues to run inside. Nightwing follows him inside, jumping over furniture that stands in his way.

Dick almost caught up with the younger man as he suddenly turns on the spot to the left and through yet again another window. Nightwing shouts after him to stop, but Jason just pushes away from the windowsill and jumps between two buildings, both arms outstretches to the front. He jumps after him, a bit panicked that the man does not use something like a grappling hook to steer or dampen the fall, though is then relieved as well as perplexed as Jason uses the gauntlets to claw his way up to the roof. Following him, he wonders where Batman is now or if they are just too fast for the other man to catch up.

"Jason, please wait!" he calls after the younger man as they jump over a gap between two buildings, though Jason does not seem to listen at all.

They chase around the city, jumping over buildings like a kind of big parkour. By now, they reached the northern docks and are running over the crates and towards a bridge in the distance. On their way, Jason has many times tried to stop him, be it by throwing knifes or by really reckless stunts that any normal person would never consider doing. Nightwing tried many times to get him to stop running, but all attempts were up until now futile.

Suddenly, Jason turns around in the middle of jumping over some crates, a gun in his hand that had been seconds before still been in the belt – when had he taken it? - and is aiming at him. Nightwing just barely avoids being shot by hiding behind a container.

Dick narrows his eyes and bites on his lower lip as he thinks what he should do now that Jason has finally stopped running. He needs a plan and fast, before the younger man tries to continue this insane chase. The only and probably the best way would be to knock the man out and get him to the cave, but how is he supposed to render the man unconscious? Nightwing resents the way he suddenly thinks and grits his teeth in anger as he activates the electricity in his escrima-sticks. The other man won't be pleased at all by this –  _that_  he is sure of. But on the other hand, it's the best way he can think about right now in this circumstances.

Turning away from his hiding spot, he dodges a bullet that flies at his head – the other  _still_  want to kill him apparently. This does  _not_  make it easier, not at all. The lack of expression on the other man's face unsettles him a bit, but right now is not the time to worry about that.

In the meantime, he notices that Jason has already holstered his weapon and holds his remaining dagger in the left hand in a reverse grip, the other bare except for the gauntlet.

Jumping to his right as he charges at Jason, Nightwing uses the crate next to him as a launch pad and jumps at the other man, his weapons ready to strike. The weapon connects with a clawed hand, the impact pushing the other man a bit back, but Nightwing notices a bit to late that – apparently – the suit of the other man is insulated as the electricity does not seem to affect him.

Eyes widening, he jumps back, but is quickly followed by Jason, who swipes with his clawed gauntlet at him. The weapon connects with his chest, ripping the kevlar and the skin beneath it. Nightwing flips back, his chest flaring angrily in pain as he moves faster away than before. He needs to end this soon. Not only is he getting tired, but the wound on his shoulder hinders his movements a bit and the one on his chest bleeds profoundly. In short, it's not a good combination.

Nightwing looks at the other man. From what he can see, the only unprotected areas are the neck and the head. The only other way to get his plan to work would be to hit him with wing-dings and hopes that they would hit and then he can attack that area with his escrima-sticks, but the idea to injure the man before him makes him sick.  _Only doing that if there is_ _really_ _no other way…_

Taking and throwing several wing-dings as decoy, he charges. Nightwing sticks the two escrima-sticks together and with a  _'click'_  it turns into a staff, great for ranged attacks but also still good for melee attacks. Jason knocks the wing-dings away and notices the change of the weapon of Nightwing, who thereupon strikes at his shoulder. The attack is countered by the dagger and Nightwing brings down the other end to the man's side. He can see his opponent's eyes twitch upon impact, but then needs to click on the button on the handle to separate the staff again as the gauntlet strikes at him. Stopping the attack in the last second, he jumps over the man and turns around. Nightwing swings one of his weapons at the man's neck and Jason shouts as he can't avoid the attack fast enough and the electricity discharges. Nightwing mentally apologizes, but his eyes widen as the man _moves_. Jumping back, he notices the state Jason is in; the man pants heavily and glares at him with hatred, and his neck looks red and angry from where it had been in direct contact with the weapon.  _How can he still stand?_

Just as the man wants to charge at him again, Nightwing sees something red behind the other man. Recognizing the man, he mentally thanks him as the other shoots something at Jason, but the other man probably heard Red Robin as Jason flips away and on the place he stood just moments before is now a little dart embedded in the ground. _Tranquilizer,_ Dick notices. The man turns around angry, one hand falling towards his belt and do his pouches.

"See you again, Dickie-bird." Jason hisses and throws a little device at the ground. "Try not to die while I am gone, because…," his eye glint dangerously in the pale light of the moon. "...only I have the right kill you." Suddenly, the area fills with smoke around him and Dick holds his hand in front of his mouth to not breath in the smoke. Running into the middle, he tries to find the younger man, but as the smoke disappears, the area is void of another human being. He's gone. He takes a deep breath, which he regrets right afterwards as his chests flares in pain and he winces.

Looking up, he sees that Red Robin jumps down from the crate, quickly followed by Robin and – of course – Batman. Red Robin takes a look at Nightwing as he gets closer, eyes wide and confused.

"...Was that…?" he starts, but stops once he takes a look at Nightwing's pale face

Nightwing shakes his head and lets out a shaky breath. "I don't know, little bird." he says quietly. "I really don't know."

Robin looks firmly at the two of them, arms crossed and slightly annoyed. "Grayson, I demand to know who this person was." he says. "Why is this murderer so important?" Ah, apparently had Batman already explained that they needed to get this man, but not  _why_  they want him. Sure, he is a murderer, but Damian is intelligent enough to notice that this is not the only reason why they are after this man.

"We need to go now." Behind all of them, Batman steps up, his expression unreadable. He looks at Dick for a moment, then deals something at his communication system on his arm. In the distance they all hear screeching of tires on the streets that indicates that the batmobil is on its way. After said car arrives, Batman enters it and drives away, leaving Robin, Red Robin and Nightwing at the docks.

"Come," Nightwing looks up at Red Robin, who holds out a hand towards him. "We need to go and fix you up." says the younger man and Nightwing sighs. He takes the offered hand and hisses as he gets up and strains his injuries.

"Tt," Damian looks at both of them, a scowl on his face. "Let's go, Grayson. We don't have the whole night."

Nightwing smirks a bit. "Nice as always, little D." he says and winces a bit as he starts to move.

* * *

Dick sits on the gurney in the medical bay as Alfred tends to his wounds. So far the butler has sewn his shoulder wound shut and looks at the one on his chest. Wincing from time to time as the older man cleans and disinfects the wound, Dick glances at Bruce, who sits in front of the computer, elbows on the desk and hands folded in front of his head while he frowns and looks to deep in thoughts.

"Do you really think that it's him?" Tim says quietly as he stands next to Dick and Alfred. Damian is perching on top the dinosaur inside the cave and is overlooking everything. So far, the youngest Robin said nothing, but he looks like he would explode soon if he can't ask what this commotion is all about soon.

Dick looks at Tim and shakes his head. "To say the truth," he says. "I don't know what I should believe right now." He winces as Alfred begins to sew shut the wound with a needle and twine.

"But how is that possible?" Tim asks and looks towards him. "We both know that Jason is..." he stops, noticing the pained look on the older man's face, which this time does not come from his physical wounds.

Dick takes a look at Bruce, who stands up from his chair. The man paces around again for a moment, then stops immediately and looks at a recording that he took during his short encounter with the assassin. A sudden look crosses Bruce's face and Dick  _knows_  that look. Normally it means that the other has some kind of idea that others do not find very appealing. "Bruce?"

"Meet me at the cemetery after you are done here." And that is when he get Bruce's idea.

Dick's eyes widens. "You can't be serious..." he whispers and gets up from his chair, much to Alfred's dismay.

Tim looks from Dick to Bruce. "Do you think he might be one of Luthor's…?" he asks.

"Even Luthor can't clone someone to 100%." Bruce says as he ascends the stairs to the manor.

Dick follows him quickly, ignoring Alfred's angry protest and shouts for him to sit down and let him finish his task. "Bruce, wait!" he calls after his mentor, but the other man just continues to walk away. Getting a bit angry, he goes faster and stops his foster father in his track by holding him at the shoulder. "Just wait a damn minute!" he hisses.

After he is sure that he's got Bruce's attention, his expression softens. "I know what you are going to do Bruce, but is this really right?" he says.

"The only way to make sure that the man we've met is not some kind of clone or something else," says Bruce, though he sounds pained to talk about it. "...is to make sure that  _he_ is still were he is supposed to be right now." he finishes.

Dick bites his lower lip. "But… is this really the right thing to do?" he asks, unsure about what to say.

Bruce's eyes narrow, though he does not look angry. "I don't like the idea either." he says as a matter of fact. "But I  _need_  to make sure."

Dick nods, understanding how the other man feels about all of this. "What.. if it really is him..?" he asks hesitantly after a moment.

Closing his eyes, Bruce lets out a breath. "We will see about that when the time comes." he declares finally, and continues to walk upstairs to the manor.

Dick turns back around and descents the stairs back down to Tim and Alfred. The latter of the two glances at him disapprovingly, arms crossed and his foot tapping on the ground impatiently. Dick gives the older man a sheepish smile and sits down on the gurney where he sat previously. Alfred continues his work after grabbing new twine.

Damian's eyes narrow after Bruce left the cave and jumps down from the dinosaur. He moves towards the remaining people inside the cave and stands in front of Dick. "What did father mean, Grayson?" he asks his older brother. "What is at the cemetery?"

Dick shakes his head. "Not  _what_ , Damian." answers Dick. "But rather  _who."_

Raising an eyebrow, Damian looks at Tim, but the other man looks away uncomfortably. Turning his attention back to his oldest brother, he looks at him expectantly. "Elaborate, Grayson. Who do you mean?"

"It might be better to rest the questions for now, Master Damian." says Alfred and looks at the child.

Again, Damian's eyes narrow. He clicks his tongue, but stops the questions for now, which Dick is grateful for at the moment, and leaves the cave as well. Alfred finishes his work soon after and retreats for the time being to make some tea.

Dick glances at the recording on one of the many displays on the computer and lets out a sigh. Internally, he hopes that this  _really_  is who he seems to be, but it just seems to be so surreal. Nobody comes back from the dead just like it would be some kind of decease that someone can overcome… But...But what  _if_  the man  _really_  is him..? How did he manage to come back and what would this mean? Would he get his brother back? Or… how will Bruce react? As far as Dick knows, Bruce still griefs and gives himself the fault about what happened.

Putting his head in his hand, he sighs. Did this so called Court do this to him? If yes, then how? Did they do this to more than just one person? If not, who else could have been taken by them? For how long did they had Jason already in their grasp?

"Lets hope that I am wrong about what I am thinking..." he says and gets up from his chair.

Next to him, Tim nods. "I am not a mind reader," he says and looks at him. "But if you say something like that, then it can't be good."

"No, it certainly is not good." he agrees. "Not good at all."

* * *

It's still night when Dick arrives at the cemetery and Bruce stands in front of a certain grave. The rain has yet to stop and thunder rolls over their heads. He remains silent for a moment as he stands next to the other man and looks at the grave in front of him. The last time Dick had been here was in August for Jason's birthday. Crestfallen, he looks away from the grave. Better get over with it sooner than later.

"You've got the shovels?" Dick asks quietly to his mentor.

Bruce looks grim, but nods anyway. He turns away and comes back with two shovels. Throwing one at his partner, he begins to dig.

The whole ordeal takes almost an hour before Dick hits something that resembles a coffin.

"Bruce," he says and looks up, his face is by now wet from the rain and sweat, just like his shirt and pants. The older man looks up from his digging and moves towards him. Looking down at where Dick had been digging, he crouches and examines the ground. His eyes narrows and Dick crouches down as well and notices the splinters. Shoveling the dirt carefully away, he sees that the lid of the coffin has been broken open.

"Do you think someone broke in?" Dick asks, but Bruce shakes his head.

"No," he says and moves the lid carefully. Opening it, he examines the coffin from inside. Bruce traces the marks that he finds on the inside and looks at the ripped satin and the blood that covers covers some of the inside of the coffin. "Someone broke out." he declares.

Dick recoils. "Y-you don't think that…?!" he says, eyes wide, but the narrowed eyes and silence answers his question. "Oh god..." He turns away, unable to look at the grave any longer. Climbing out, he walks around a bit, then takes a deep breath and blinks while putting his hands on his knees.

Taking another deep breath, he tries to ease the nausea that threatens to overcome him.  _Oh god… oh god, oh god, oh god…_  The same words repeat itself in his mind over and over again. Jason had been alive for some reason –  _or came back –_ and clawed his way out of his own  _grave_. How long…? How long had he been …  _back?_  Why did nobody notice what had happened?

Behind him, he can hear Bruce climbing out as well. The man still shows no expression besides the grim look on his face. Oh how much Dick wishes that he could hit the man and gain a real expression. But that won't do anything, not now.

Dick gulps and straightens his back. He turns to Bruce and looks at him disbelievingly. "Then it's… it really is him?" he whispers, but in his ear it could have likely been a yell.

"I don't know how," Bruce says and begins to shovel the dirt back into the hole. "But it seems to be the way."

Dick stays next to the grave for a bit, still trying to collect his thoughts and get everything together."He gave me the fault for what happened to him," says Dick after a while, voice thick with emotions. He turns around, facing his mentor and looks at the other man. "He said that I was supposed to take his place. God Bruce, he sounded so angry and pained!"

The other man glances at Dick for a moment, then his eyes narrow. "We will find out about what happened." he says, voice firm, and continues to fill the hole with dirt. "We will get him back…"

"I hope you are right…," mutters Dick and helps Bruce.

* * *

_He finds himself in a sea of green, not moving, not blinking… not breathing. But that doesn't matter, at least not here. Time doesn't matter in this place. He can hear shouting, crying, screaming. He can hear metal clashing with objects he can not see, bones breaking and maddening, hysterical laughter all around him._ _He feels broken beyond repair, a fire licking at his skin and burning his flesh. He wants to scream, to run, to flee. Suddenly, there is a loud crash or explosion and pain spikes, then fades completely. The laughter stops. He doesn't feel the pain anymore and is relieved. No...not just the pain. Everything. He does feel nothing anymore._

_He feels dead, yet alive. It doesn't make sense and he knows that this is wrong, but true._ _Then there is a bright light and he wonders why it does not hurt, but then there is this maddening pain from before again, just stronger. He feels rather than sees his fingers bleeding and his nails ripping. He wants this to end, wants someone to just put him out of his misery and then, all of a sudden it all stops._ _He would have taken a relieved breath, finally that it is over, but then the vibrant green of his surroundings envelopes him and the pain flares up, the same agony that he has experienced before. The thickness of the sea around him swallows him whole and he just begs that it would finally end…_

Jason wakes up all of a sudden, breathing hard. He jumps up into a sitting position in a rush and winces as he aggravates his wounds on his back and chest. ' _Wounds...?_ ' He blinks as he tries to figure out how he got said injuries and looks down at himself. He is bandaged up, the gauze, which is slightly red from his blood, wrapped around his whole torso, his left tight and both his upper arms.  _How...?_ Ah yes, he remembers.

He had gone back to the Court even though knowing that his Master will be furious with him. Not only did he fail to kill the stupid idiot called Dick, but he has also let his identity slip towards Batman. Jason sneers. As if this would be enough for him, to let him know that his biggest failure came back to haunt him. No, it is not enough yet.

After Jason heard that the Joker - his murderer - is still alive and not six feet under like he himself had been, he had been livid. His Master had been pleased by his anger and rage towards the whole Bat-family and fueled his hatred further with cruel words. ' _They do not care, Jason. Never have and never will. They threw you away like a broken doll and replaced you..._ ' He blocks the cruel voice out. But it still  _hurts..._

Jason groans as he stands up, the pain from his wounds protesting from his movements. They had whipped him, carved him open like some kind of disobedient and rabid animal while he had been chained. He couldn't run, couldn't escape. He winces at the memory of the time he had been tortured. Jason knows though that the injuries will be gone soon though, just like always after he got here.

Sometimes he feels like the others, like the Talons around this place. Not human... Not anymore at least. While Jason realizes that he is not  _like_  the other Talon –  _undead –_ he knows that, what he has done time and time again, should have killed other people –  _normal people –_  multiple times by now.

He does not know if he really is alive, if this is some sort of sick dream or if this is just how reality is from now on. Whatever they did to him while he had been cut off from the world in these tanks, it had stripped him off of his humanity. Jason takes a deep breath as he steadies himself on the wall next to his bed. Beneath the bandages, he feels his flesh beginning to knit together, beginning to heal what normally would take weeks for normal humans. But he is not human anymore… hasn't been for a long time.

He growls at his situation. He cant be put out of this misery, cant die unless the Court allows it… Jason sneers at that. Yeah, sure. As if they would just let their  _trophy_  go. He feels sick at the thought to serve this bastards into eternity. Multiple times he tried to end his life, to end all his and escape this hell hole. A cut throat, poison, strangulation, a bullet in the head… Afterwards, he always wakes up in his tank, hooked up on the tubes and wires and  _god, his body hurts as if one fire…_  The punishment afterwards isn't pleasant at all as well.

He shakes his head, trying to clear his mind off of the images as his body trembles in fear from the memory. Jason does not know  _how_  they do it, how they can keep reviving him without the Lazarus Pit that had originally restored him his mind or whatever  _else_  had granted him his resurrection. While he had been kept inside the tank, he sometimes could hear what the others, the scientists outside of his glass prison, were talking about, though the voices were muffled by the water and made understanding them difficult.

From what he could understand, it has something to do with the Lazarus Pit and the act that Talia had dumped him into it. Apparently, they took samples of his blood and tried to restore the ability that it gained from the bath in the pit, something like regeneration, though it does only work with Jason himself. Everyone else gets rejected and dies mere minutes after the injection as the blood turns against the foreign body and destroys the cells. Not a nice way to go,  _that's_  for sure. There was more to it, but he had been to weak to listen more closely to the discussion and slipped into unconsciousness a few seconds after.

Moving away from the wall he was leaning against, he moves towards the table and sits on the lone chair in front of it. Carefully sitting down, he lets out a sigh once he is seated, though immediately winces as the back of the chair rubs against his wounds. He ignores the stinging in his back and chest as he opens the drawer on his desk and takes out a pair of scissors and new gauze, and cuts open the used and bloody bandages. One he got them off, he throws them into a bin at the other end of the table to dispose them later on.

Looking down on himself, he notices the autopsy scar on his chest that reminds him strangely of an 'Y' and he huffs in annoyance. The pit healed every wound he had at the time, but all the scars he got before he died remained. Every wound he got after though… they heal without leaving a trace.

Turning to his current wounds, he takes a note of the shredded and swelled skin that the straps of the whip had left. If someone would look  _very_  close, they would see an almost invisible green shine in the blood that is at the edges of the torn skin and a few minutes later the injury is covered in a thin and fragile part of new skin. Well, at least one positive aspect that lingered from their experiments, not that he would  _thank_  them though.  _Huh, no way_ that  _will happen,_  he muses.

After successfully changing his bandages, he leaves the room and walks towards the main hall in which his so called Master will surely be right now.  _Or_  the man will be in the Hall of Talons, where most of the promising Talons are kept asleep for generations, waiting to be awakened and to fulfill the orders of the Court.

His Master is in the Hall of Talons, inspecting the coffins in which the Talons are sleeping. Jason waits till the other addresses him, which is only a few minutes after he arrived. He thinks his Master wants to let him think over his actions and to feel some remorse about what he did.  _As if that would happen,_  he mentally sneers. He would do it time after time again if it means that he would be fr-.

"Talon," The voice of his Master snaps him back from his thoughts and he realizes that he hadn't noticed that the other had already talked to him. "I can hear you thinking."

_'You're a mind reader or what?'_  is what he would normally say, but he refrains from talking towards the other man in such a way in fear of resentment. Instead, he looks down towards the ground and says; "My deepest apology, Master."

The other seems to take the apology, even though his posture indicates that he has not been forgiven yet. "Your mission was a great failure it seems." His Master turns around, walking around and in between the rows of coffins and Jason follows with a respectful distance between them. "Why is that?" It's difficult to say if his Master is angry, amused or if he does care at all that he had failed, as his voice does not let Jason indicate anything at all. At those moments it is extremely difficult to talk to the other man, as Jason never knows what mood the other is in and what he should say and what he should rather keep to himself.

"I didn't took Batman and his pests into account as I took care of my prey, Master." he replies and, well, what else should he say, it  _is_  the truth. He had been too occupied with Goldie, that he totally forgot about the other man. "It won't happen again." he concludes and both of them stop in front of one of the coffins, and Jason  _knows_  which one that is. Carved into a golden sign on top of the coffin stands William Cobb.  _Goldie's great grandfather._  He refrains from narrowing his eyes in front of his Master.

"I truly hope you follow your own words," says the other man and walks closer towards Jason, who gets down to his knees. "It is for you own good after all." his master says and stands in front of him.

"You are getting reckless, Talon." Jason can hear the disdain in the other's voice. "Do something about it, or  _we_  will." A cold shiver runs down Jason's spine as he listens to the threat. He bows his head further down, eyes fixed to the ground as his heart pounds against his rip cage in fear. He gets the message; they are displeased. His Master turns around and continues to walk alongside the coffins while Jason stands up.

Walking out of the room, Jason walks towards his quarters. Supporting himself with his arms against a wall once he is inside, he clenches his jaw that it almost hurts. He loathes this, all of it. He loathes the Court for taking him, loathes Talia for not being able to take care of him when he had been out of his mind and he loathes Bruce for not saving him back then when he died. But most of all he hates the golden boy, Dick Grayson. If he would just have turned out to be Talon he was supposed to become and not Robin, then Jason would be the first boy wonder and would have never gotten told by Bruce to be more like his predecessor Dick and would also not be stuck here in this place.

In his anger, Jason hits the wall and watches as spidery cracks appear in the dented wall. His hand hurts, but its a small pain compared to the ones he had to endure all this years.

If he just hadn't met Dick in Blüdhaven, then he would still be in his Master's remotely good grace and would not fear that he will probably loose his life again just when he returned and will be turned into a mindless puppet like the other Talons.

But  _of course_  Dickface needed to show up at Jason's mission and not at someone else's little crime scene. He ruins just about  _everything_ for Jason. Richard  _Dick_  Grayson, golden boy of the family and then there is Jason, the black sheep.

Jason slips down at the wall, his knees hitting the ground that he knows is cold but he doesn't notice it anymore. He rests his head against the wall and closes his eyes.

Just  _why?_

_Why_  can't life be fair to him just  _once?_


End file.
